Precise current sensing is essential for several power electronics’ protection, control, and reliability mechanisms. Even so, WBG power converters will likely struggle to develop a single current-sensing scheme to measure various types of currents due to the limited space and size of these devices, the required high sensing speed, and the high electromagnetic interference (EMI) emissions they cause. Analysis of existing current sensors was conducted in such terms with the objective of understanding the challenges associated with their integration into WBG power converters. Since each of these requirements has different design tradeoffs, it is challenging to consider one specific method of current sensing to be perfect for all situations; thus, the possibility of developing novel methods to improve the performance of these single-scheme current sensors is further explored.

High-frequency power electronics require a more tailored design process, as well as compatible instrumentation necessary for operation and maintenance. Hence, there is a need for high bandwidth, compact, and accurate current measurement solution to serve the trending high-frequency power electronics. Embedded Rogowski sensor is among the favorites, due to its high bandwidth, compactness, and integrability. However, the inability to measure dc components is setting it back to be used as an integrated switch-current sensor for wide-bandgap power electronics. This letter presents a Rogowski-based switch-current detector, including a novel dc compensation technique. The proposed sensor can detect very fast switch-current waveforms, not requiring any external resetting functions to correct the sensor measurement errors.

Current prognostics for life expectancy of power semiconductors utilize off-line measurements of the on-state resistance. Presented is a half-bridge (HB) on-state voltage (VON) sensor capable of being utilized for in-situ measurements enabling continuous and real-time monitoring of the on-state resistance. The design provides a single VON measurement output that contains independent VON information of both high and low side devices in a HB leg. The measurement output is referenced from the middle point of the HB and combines the two complementary VON sensing outputs. This system reduces the number of components, required number of analog signal processing circuits, and ADC channels for in-situ health monitoring of a power electronics system. These reductions will facilitate integration of the VON sensor with the gate driver board and achieve low system profile. The experimental results demonstrate the proposed VON measurements while switching with inductive and resistive loads.

In this paper, an optimal approach based on on-off controller is used to optimally control a DC-DC step-down converter. It is shown that the conventional controller techniques of DC-DC converters based on a linearized averaging model have several drawbacks, including different operating mode, linearization concerns, and constraint difficulties. A single-mode discretize state-space model is used, and a new optimal approach policy is implemented to control a step-down DC-DC converter. The simulation results confirm that the proposed DC-DC model associated with the optimal controller functions properly in controlling a DC-DC unfixed switch-mode step-down converter that is facing load changes, noisy inputs, and start-up procedure.